There is a young boy that lives near me, and when school is in session, he often walks through my neighborhood towards the local grade school when I am on my way to work. And he likes to sing. When I first noticed him, that was what caught my attention. He carried some manner of electronic music player, with long white wires leading to his ears, and he wasn’t the least bit shy about singing along as he walked. His eyes were half-closed, his head moved side-to-side with the tune, and his mouth clearly formed the words to the song that was playing. I remember thinking, “Oboy, I bet the other kids love to make fun of him for that!” But if they did, he obviously didn’t care. I’ve seen him quite frequently since, and he often isn’t singing softly at all; there are times I can hear him a block away. I’ve even caught him mixing it up with one of those speaker-microphones that amplify your voice when you speak into them. He was having a great time with the thing, growling and shouting into it, and watching people jump. This is not a self-conscious, bashful grade-schooler. But mostly he just sings, and he obviously loves it.
Most children get past that lack of self-consciousness at an early age. When they are very small, they are likely say anything that pops into their head, and do whatever they like without a second thought of who might think less of them for it. When I was somewhere around three or four, I walked into the living room where my Mom was entertaining some of her lady friends, with my pants around my ankles, because I wanted some motherly assistance with my bathroom cleanup. A ten-year-old would have been mortified at the very thought. In fact, I think only a year or two later, I would have been mortified … I am certainly less than comfortable now when my sister, who was an eyewitness, tells the story at family gatherings. But sometime before adolescence, children start caring what kind of impression they make with others. By the time they are teenagers, it’s one of the most important things in the world to them. When we are adults, we don’t often think of it overtly, but it’s a reflexive, subconscious thing to do what we consider “normal” to our own social sphere. I imagine that my young neighbor might still listen to music when he’s on the way to high school a few years from now, but I’m willing to bet he won’t sing out loud on the street.
For the most part, this is all to the good. No one likes to be in the same train car on their morning commute with someone singing aloud to their favorite music. And not many would enjoy a party where even one person spoke his or her mind without the slightest concern how it would be taken. If everyone was doing it, most of us would walk out within minutes, if we waited even that long. There is, after all, a reason we learn to be self-conscious, and it is directly related to the social pressures that we consider normal. But we also often learn to overdo it. How many people spend their entire lives doing what’s expected of them instead of what they love? According to the author Bronnie Ware, who wrote the book “the Top Five Regrets of the Dying,” this is regret Number One. An article in Forbes.com puts it at number six. Social pressure can be a good thing, but it can be a bad thing as well.
Which begs the question, where do you draw the line? There is a tendency in people to look at things like this in strict black-and-white terms. If you aren’t a full-out rebel, you are a conformist drone. If you don’t like your job, quit right now, burn your bridges, and start that cat herding business you always wanted! That last is a good way to wind up homeless and eating at a soup kitchen, and people who give advice like that are selling something. But even a lifestyle you adore is going to have it’s down moments, its times of drudgery, its stresses and pain. And a lifestyle of boring regularity is going to have its times of happiness and satisfaction. It’s very easy to compartmentalize all endeavor, slap labels on it, and gripe about about whatever you don’t have. Yet how many of those people who named their deep regrets for those interviewers and authors wouldn’t have regrets just as deep if they had decided differently?
I think almost all of them would. The problem wasn’t what they did or didn’t do, it was what they made important. If being well-accepted by your peers truly is what you have made most important in your life, chances are you will eventually regret it. If utterly ignoring your peers is what you made most important, you might find you regret that just as much. The difficulty is that life is just too short to do everything. So what you make the most important in your life is going to be what you spend the most of your time at. And the things that really are important are going to get neglected. All of our lives are limited, either in time or resources, and most likely both … we can only do so much, and what we wind up doing will be guided by what we give the priority to. So the only way to not have a life chock-full of regrets is to make the things that are truly important the most important things to you as well. But that means you cannot let others decide for you what is important, you have to make that call yourself, and then you have to make it your priority. Kids don’t have that problem. They like something, they do it; they want something, they try to get it. They don’t let other people’s opinions get in the way much. And as adults, I think we can safely make the assumption that conforming to societal norms in superficial matters of behavior is probably a good thing, but letting your concept of those norms steer you in the deepest matters of life is probably a very big mistake.
So what’s important? Almost everyone agrees that relationships are. Friends and family first, as is often said. As a Christian, I say that my relationship with God is the most important thing, but even God says we need to put a priority on our relationships with each other (John 13:34-35, 1 Peter 4:8, 1 John 3:11, 1 John 4:11-12. to name just a few). John even takes it a step further in 1 John 4:20, where he writes, “If someone says, “I love God,” and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen, how can he love God whom he has not seen?”. According to Scripture, it’s not even possible to love God if you don’t love your brother as well (and in the epistles of John, brother is used as a synonym for fellow believer, not necessarily a brother of blood relation).
Personally, I think everything that is really important boils down to how much we care for each other. I love books, and my default behavior is to stick my nose in one and not come out until I have to. But if I spend too much time reading, I become restless and unsatisfied. I have to get out and interact with other people. And I’m an introvert … too much time socializing, and I feel like I have to run and hide. But I still need to do it, and I have to fight the urge to spend too much time alone, or only with my wife. And that is because relationships are important, and our relationships with each other reflect on how well we maintain our relationship with God.
What else is important? For one thing, pretty much anything that supports our ability to care for each other. That necessarily includes things like food, shelter and clothing, because if we shuffle off this mortal coil, we aren’t in much of a position to help others or show how much we care for them. The ways in which we maintain relationships and care for each other are important too, and those things vary from person to person with our abilities and talents. It’s important to take care of ourselves, spiritually, physically, mentally and emotionally, for the same reason … but also because we cannot function properly if we do not. Sometimes that means just doing what we, personally, enjoy. And that’s another thing that children excel in, just plain having fun. If you watch small children at play, you can see that it spreads as much joy as they take from it. Which is yet another point: what’s in our hearts flows out to others (Matt. 12:34-35), good or bad. So if our lives are filled with joy and love, it’s going to spread.
Christians make much of a child-like faith because of what Christ said in Luke 18:17. But what does it really mean? I think, in part, it’s just what I have been saying here. Like children, we have to put the things that are truly important to us first. Of course, our concept of what is important is qualified by our perceptions as adults. We don’t need to sing out loud on the streets to be “as a child,” but we do need to sing. And if we remain quiet, if we fail to live out the most important aspects of being a human being, which are to love God and each other, we are going to leave this world with regret and sorrow, and we will fail of the potential God has given us in Christ.